Announcing Techstars Kansas City

We’re excited to announce that we’re deepening our commitment to the rapidly emerging startup ecosystem in Kansas City with the launch of Techstars Kansas City. Applications will open in January 2017. We will select 10 startups and the program will begin in July 2017.

Lesa Mitchell will be the Managing Director and the program will run with a horizontal focus in a manner similar to our other accelerators in Boulder, Boston, Seattle, Austin, New York City, London and Berlin. Many of you should know Lesa as the former VP Innovation and Networks of the Kauffman Foundation and an alumni of Marion Laboratories.

Techstars has deep roots in Kansas City, going back to 2013 when Brad Feld (co-founder of Techstars) purchased a house (Feld Fiber House) for entrepreneurs in the Startup Village, then in 2014 when we ran the Sprint Accelerator with Sprint for three programs. We are excited to continue to support this thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem.

As a University of Kansas alum and having grown up in Kansas, I’m personally thrilled with this announcement today. Lesa is officially our third Jayhawk to take the reins at a Techstars program.

If you’re a corporation interested in partnering with Techstars to bring this accelerator to KC, please email info@techstars.com. If you’re interested in applying to the program, please check out the Application Toolkit.

Cody SimmsCody is the Executive Director at Techstars in North and South America. Previously, Cody was the Managing Director of the Disney Accelerator, Powered by Techstars. He is also on the board of Naritiv, a mobile media network with Snapchat as its center of gravity. @codysimms